Article 
Millar: Enhancing Brand Experience Through Branded Spaces

Branded spaces provide a multisensory association with the brand through spatial configuration, visual design, wayfinding and other tangible elements. It’s a way of allowing customers and employees alike to experience the brand and better understand what it represents, bolstering their relationship with the brand’s purpose.

When long-time client Millar approached our team to begin work on their brand new corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility in Pearland, Texas, it provided an opportunity to bring a vibrant storied brand to life within a space that reimagined how office visitors could interact with Millar’s brand mission.

Millar’s goal for its new corporate headquarters was to capture the full spirit of the brand and provide context for the immense value created by Millar over the course of its many decades of manufacturing pressure-sensing medical equipment that saves lives. The company wanted to express its brand across four key spaces within the new building, using the story of the Millar brand to illustrate the full range of prior accomplishments and future potential stored within the halls of the building. 

The result of our collaboration was an achievement in environmental branding that reimagined how office visitors could interact with Millar’s brand mission. Read on to learn how branded spaces can power meaningful experiences in a physical space, and communicate the full value of a brand through environmental design.

Setting the Stage

BrandExtract and Millar have a longstanding relationship that spans over ten years. Their business manufactures pressure sensors for clinical and research use, pushing the medical field forward through innovations in medical technology.

Over the course of our partnership with Millar, we’ve helped them reposition their brand for growth and industry leadership, sparking new energy into Millar’s branding through a fresh look-and-feel and brand identity. Some of our work over the years has included:

• Developing a new mission, vision and values to bring Millar’s purpose into focus and align leadership with sales teams and all other employees.
• Evaluating market densities and geography to better align sales focus, media spends and application messaging.
• Refining a simplified product architecture and naming convention to bring additional clarity to the offering in the marketplace.
• Designing go-to-market launches to introduce a re-energized Millar to their audience.
• Creating an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) value chain to guide the company in identifying new revenue opportunities.

The result has been a transformational partnership that has helped Millar grow from a catheter manufacturer into a global OEM partner. Their brand repositioning has empowered massive growth over the past several years, adding even more depth to the Millar story.

An Evolving Branded Space

When Millar originally approached our team to work on the branding for a new corporate office, we were tasked with designing four wall graphics in key areas of their headquarters. However, as we began the concepting phase and early designs, we started thinking bigger about how we could create an experience to showcase the Millar brand and history. 

Branded spaces can telegraph an organization's stability, growth, and professionalism. They also provide an opportunity to highlight the brand mission, vision and values, and act as a vehicle to communicate the history of the organization through its technological advancements, accolades and more.

The new Millar office had the potential to serve as a living exhibit of the groundbreaking and life-changing technologies the brand had developed over the years. We began assessing projected foot traffic across different areas of Millar’s offices, keeping an eye out for potential areas where we could design key visual moments to tell the story of Millar’s brand.

This also involved balancing the functional needs of visitors while still taking advantage of key opportunities for brand storytelling. We evaluated areas based on the number of entrances, the types of occupants who would be walking in certain areas (such as employees versus clients/partners), the amount of blank space available in areas like long hallways, and the light sources that would affect the look and feel of different spaces.

 

We eventually identified multiple opportunities to embed Millar’s brand more deeply into the building, setting up a narrative for ambition and growth that was core to the Millar brand:

• Building graphics: Concepts, design, messaging, and production management for 27 key areas
• Signage: Concepts, design and production of interior wayfinding and signage for over 150 areas
• Interactive Display and Exhibit: Design, programming and production management for an interactive display system that would showcase Millar innovations, history, products and capabilities
• Installation and Fabrication Management: Production checks, site visits and design QA for building graphics and signage, coordinating architects, fabricators and construction teams.

This new expanded scope would tell a more complete story about the progression of Millar’s brand, and better match the scale of the new headquarters. It would also provide more visual consistency throughout the office spaces, providing a holistic brand experience that communicates Millar’s history and impact.

Environmental branding provides an opportunity to showcase what a brand looks like in action. By rethinking the extent to which Millar’s new office would champion its brand mission, we were able to significantly upgrade the environmental branding into a comprehensive brand experience.

Building the Narrative

One of the benefits of branding a physical space is that it provides clear-cut pathways through which visitors will experience the brand however the space is designed. This offers ample opportunity for a cohesive story that showcases the progression of a brand’s significance.

In contrast to digital spaces, which can be accessed through any number of hyperlinks, emails, ads or landing pages, physical environments have a limited number of ways people can enter and exit the branded experience. This means you can plan the messaging that a visitor sees, reads and interacts with every step of the way.

Our team got to work transforming ordinary office spaces into brand communication touchpoints that would reinforce different aspects of the Millar brand identity and values. Practical features like office signage doubled as both a wayfinding measure and a branded touchpoint that provided visual consistency around the Millar brand identity.

The new building lobby, with walls dominated by bold brand-color graphics of purple and orange, features high-level messaging and the Millar logo that immediately catches the attention of anyone who enters the building. This was a crucial first step in the brand experience, familiarizing all visitors with Millar’s brand identity and introducing the tagline, “Making the improbable possible.”

In that same entrance area, we designed a fully-interactive touchscreen display that allows the user to pinpoint different areas of the body and elaborate upon how Millar creates pressure-sensing technology to study and aid those anatomical systems. Next to the interactive monitor were viewfinder window displays that exhibited various microscopic pieces of Millar technology to further drive home the brand’s value proposition.

Past the reception area, a long corridor was selected to display a complete timeline of the company, showcasing the entire history of Millar since its founding in 1969. Along the hallway were various milestones highlighting major accomplishments in Millar’s storied history. Windowed exhibits holding early medical technology painted a picture of the company’s legacy of innovation over the past 50+ years.

Tying the entire experience together were additional wall graphics and messaging that pervaded the entire building, from boardrooms to meeting rooms to break areas and a high-occupancy “town hall” area. The graphics follow the flow of walking through the facility, guiding the journey of a visitor through carefully-placed lines and designs that point in specific directions. 

The pervading messaging gives a nod to Millar’s past, present and future, providing visitors with insight into the brand’s identity. Key brand terms such as “excellence,” “collaboration” and “discovery” popped out from the rest of the copy on the walls, joined by quotes from famous innovators such as Alan Turing and Thomas Edison.

This consistent reinforcement of organizational values not only serves to impress visitors, but also becomes a critical part of the employee value proposition. Branded environments foster a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints, enhancing trust and recognition for everyone who works in the building. These spaces heighten emotional engagement by creating memorable, resonant experiences and storytelling. Ultimately, it serves to cultivate a workforce that embodies the brand’s ethos.

Create a Cohesive Brand Experience

Branded spaces have a multidimensional impact that extends beyond just a visual identity. They engage all the senses in an immersive brand experience that cultivates cohesion among employees and visitors alike. 

The spatial language throughout Millar’s new office communicates the organization’s unique brand values. It aligns the space with the mission driving the company forward, allowing prospective customers to gain a deeper understanding of the value Millar provides, and generating enthusiasm for the brand among employees. Ultimately, it helps create brand advocates who appreciate the full depth and breadth of Millar’s brand.

The design of physical spaces creates community through their ability to host branded immersive experiences. A branded space elevates the brand in the mind of all stakeholders involved, invigorating it as an active, lived-in space that empowers the value created by the organization every day. Organizations that can create these branded spaces build more brand affinity and are able to align the visions of their stakeholders more effectively.

No matter the medium, whether it’s a website, an email campaign or a brand new office building, your brand should speak to the true value you provide. At BrandExtract, our team of expert designers, strategists and innovators help align your corporate value with your brand values, and then help communicate that story to the world. 

If you have a project you’d like to talk about, don’t hesitate to reach out. Or, learn about some of the ways we’ve helped companies like Millar unlock new potential with their brand.